Trouble in the Wind

by Chris Kennedy

  The silence lingered as heavily as the midday humidity between them. Jack chewed on Rapicault’s pronouncement until his concentration was broken by the staccato cracks of distant small arms fire—too distant to be on the range behind them. Jack made eye contact with Rapicault, wordlessly both men snatched up binoculars from a shelf and began scanning the jungle.

  There—Jack saw three dull gray clouds rising above the treetops. Fuck. Someone is pitching grenades.

  “Captain, one o’clock, three thousand yards,” Jack gave the distance and direction to the explosions.

  “I see them,” Rapicault said, turning and taking the stairs down the tower two at a time. Jack followed close behind.

  * * *

  The American advisory team maintained their own operations center in a Quonset hut right next to 2nd Company’s command post. It was to this semi-cylindrical structure that Jack and Captain Rapicault sprinted. Corporal McClung, their radio operator, already had the advisor with the platoon in contact on the horn by the time they barreled through the door. Over the speaker, audible even among explosions and the constant roar and rattle of concentrated small arms fire, Jack could hear Sergeant Carabastas’ Puerto Rican accent.

  “Negative Ajax-One,” Carabastas said. “We are under intense fire; I can’t get a good count. We’ve had visual contact with at least two battalions; we are currently engaged with two or more company’s worth.”

  Rapicault gestured for McClung to give him the hand microphone for the radio.

  “Ajax-One-Red, this is Ajax One-Six,” Rapicault said. “We’re spinning up a reaction force to come get you. What else can you tell me about the enemy and your situation?”

  “Sir, they’ve get a ton of automatic weapons,” Carabastas said. “Machine guns and automatic rifles. No mortars or artillery yet. These aren’t raggedy-ass locals, sir. They’re regulars in camo-pattern and fritz helmets.”

  “Roger, Red,” Rapicault said. “Hold out, we’re coming for you.”

  “One-Six, I don’t think we’re going to last,” Carabastas said, his voice shook slightly, but he maintained his composure. “We’re down to one squad of effectives. They’re pressing hard. We’ll kill as many as we can, but you should get ready—”

  The transmission ended abruptly. From outside, the sounds of battle began to fade.

  “Red, this is Six,” Rapicault said, not shouting, but with unmistakable urgency. “Red, Six, acknowledge…Red, this is Six, do you copy? Damn it.”

  Rapicault stood up, handing the mic back to McClung.

  “I’m going to head next door,” he said. “Sergeant Beasley, you and McClung report to Ajax Main, relay our situation and request air support—”

  A high-pitched, whistling shriek filled Jack’s ears.

  “DOWN!” Jack and Rapicault screamed in unison, each grabbing one of McClung’s arms and flattening themselves to the floor. A brief flash of heat rolled over him and Jack felt his guts undulate from a wave of concussive force. Sheets of fragmentation penetrated the thin, tin walls of the operations center hut, shredding equipment but, miraculously, missing Jack’s vulnerable skin.

  Well, now we know what they were saving their mortars for…

  Lifting his head, Jack saw the room was well and truly shredded from frag. His ears were ringing as he staggered to his feet, and it sounded as if all the noises around him were coming from the far end of a metal funnel. Rapicault was shouting something.

  “Grab weapons and radios, we have to move!”

  Jack lurched to comply, still punch drunk from the nearby blast. Stumbling through the smoke filled hut to the weapons rack, he grabbed McClung’s carbine and tossed it to him, followed by a ruck sack with a radio. Then he secured his own Garand and another ruck with a radio in it. Rapicault already held his own Thompson and was slinging another radio onto his back, headed out. Jack followed, pushing McClung ahead of him through the door, now swinging wildly ajar.

  The first sight that greeted Jack as he stepped outside was the smoking ruin of 2nd Company’s CP. Looking around, he saw dozens of FVA troops milling about, unsure of what to do. Another whistling shriek split the air.

  Rapicault was screaming in Vietnamese, Jack himself screamed, “Descendre!” as he dove for the muddy ground of the camp.

  Once again he was rocked to his innards from the detonation, and he felt mud, dirt, and harder particulate matter clatter against his steel helmet before he looked back up. He saw a boot, somehow still upright, with the bloody, jagged remains of a human foot in it, but no sign of the victim. A few feet away, one of the FVA troops was clutching his stomach as dark, almost black blood pouring through his fingers while he screamed his agony to the heavens. The rest of the soldiers he saw stood, crouched, or lay where they were, unmoving, clearly in shock.

  “New plan,” Rapicault said, slightly more rapid speech the only crack in his characteristic aplomb. “You two get to a fighting position and check in with Ajax Main. I’ll organize the defense.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Rapicault sprang to his feet and began issuing orders to the Vietnamese troops, gesturing emphatically toward the camp’s defensive line to the north, then to the wounded and to the sand-bagged dugout that was the Camp’s aid station. In short order, Vietnamese NCOs and officers began herding their men per Rapicault’s direction. Most ran toward the line; a few carried or dragged the wounded to the aid station.

  A sound like a half-dozen buzz saws roaring into operation drew Jack’s eyes north just in time to see several streams of tracers emerging from the tree-line, across the engagement area and toward the battalion’s fighting positions.

  “Come on, McClung,” Jack said, grabbing the kid by the arm and running toward one of the platoon command dug outs. “You heard the man.”

  * * *

  Spotting a radio antenna sprouting from behind a rock in the middle of the kill zone, Foom settled his elbows into the soft jungle floor and pressed the select-fire toggle on his STG-46 to E for Eisenfeurer, “Single Shot.” He lined up the hooded front sight post on the dome of the green enemy helmet just below the antenna. Even as grenades detonated nearby, and rifle and machine gun fire cracked, stuttered, and buzzed around him like a cavalcade of malicious, deadly insects, Foom took a deep breath and then exhaled, squeezing the trigger steadily so that the rifle recoiled into his shoulder with a sharp, sonic crack at the bottom of his natural pause.

  Foom was rewarded with an audible metallic CLINK and a puff of pink as the helmet flew several feet away from his victim. Foom allowed himself a grunt of satisfaction.

  The FVA platoon was dying with a whimper. They’d fought bravely, but Foom’s ambush had caught them completely unaware. Rather than having to assault through their position, Foom and his men walked through the kill zone, treating every corpse in the wrong uniform to a burst of fire.

  Foom found the corpse of the radio operator he had killed slumped against the rock. The upper left quadrant of the man’s face was a grisly ruin, the exit wound of Foom’s shot having blown out the man’s eye socket, cheek bone and half his nose. Foom noted the chevrons and rockers on the dead man’s fatigues; an American sergeant despite his darker skin. And in his ruck sack—

  His radio!

  Foom stripped the pack off the corpse’s back and put the radio hand mic to his ear. His pulse jumped; the Americans were still talking on this frequency. He couldn’t understand a word of it, but they were definitely still sending traffic over the net. Foom motioned for his own radio operator.

  “Adjutant, this is Foom,” he said when he got Vanderburgh on the net. “We have an intact American radio, and they are still transmitting on its frequency.”

  * * *

  Jack’s Garand barked twice in quick succession, and a camouflage-clad enemy fell to his knees and then face first into a razor wire obstacle. One of the dead man’s comrades stepped on the corpse and hurtled the wire, a long tube, at least fifteen feet in length, in his hands. Jack acquired the new target and fired
, but his enemy had dropped to the prone, out of Jack’s sight picture. Jack tried to reacquire and fire again but his empty clip ejected from the rifle’s chamber with a quiet ping!

  As Jack thumbed another eight round clip into the Garand, the THROOM of an explosion split the humid jungle air, followed by several smaller blasts as the enemy’s Bangalore set off a dozen sympathetic detonations. A linear fountain of dirt twenty feet high erupted straight through the minefield.

  Jack’s hand slipped and the bolt of the Garand kept a tiny scrap of Jack’s thumb as it rammed forward, chambering another round.

  “Damn it,” Jack hissed. In moments, the two nearest .30 caliber machine gun positions altered their sectors of fire to rake the newly opened lane through their minefield with bursts of automatic fire. Four enemy soldiers jerked and fell in the breach, but more hurtled past them, rising and falling, crawling, then sprinting, inexorably toward the 2nd company’s main position. From the mixture of black, white, and brown faces advancing toward them, Jack assumed that it was a Foreign Legion unit they faced.

  We’re slowing them, but we’re not stopping them.

  Rapicault did a credible baseball slide into the company command dugout. He was speaking Vietnamese into his radio. As he finished speaking, a volley of artillery shells impacted in the tree line five hundred meters in front of them. Three orange-black detonations shredded tree and man alike and the flow of enemy infantry out of the jungle slowed just a bit.

  “Just three tubes?” Jack shouted over the din of battle.

  “Every one of the outposts is getting hit,” Rapicault said. “And at least three regiments are converging on the main base at Plei Mrong. I was lucky to get an arty platoon in direct support.”

  “Three regiments? They missed a fucking division?!” Jack shouted as a burst of enemy machine gun fire kicked up a row of mud fountains right in front of his sandbags. “What the hell have the intel assholes been doing? Diddling each other over their typewriters?”

  “What did MAC-V-Air say about air support?” Rapicault said, ignoring Jack’s outburst.

  “Major Jordan told me they would scramble what they could,” Jack said, gesturing to his pack on the floor of the dugout. “I couldn’t reach Pleiku, so the regimental advisory team is relaying to MAC-V-Air. Maybe your railroad tracks will get them moving faster.”

  Rapicault nodded, taking Jack’s hand mic and keying it.

  “Ajax Main, Ajax Main, this is Ajax One-Six,” Rapicault said. “We are under attack by a reinforced regiment. We will be overrun in less than one hour without support. What’s the status of our air, over?”

  “Ajax Main, this is Tiger Four checking in.” Before Ajax-Main could answer, a deep, smoothly modulated southern voice announced its presence on the net.

  “Glad to hear it, Tiger Four,” Major Jordan’s voice from Plei Mrong sounded as relived as Jack felt. “Stand by for the advisor on the scene. Ajax One-Six, we have air, over.”

  “Roger, Ajax Main,” Rapicault said. “Tiger Four, this is Ajax One-Six, recommend you make your run northeast to southwest, parallel to our position, initial point on or north of Zebra-Baker Zero-One-Zero, One-Five-Two. That pattern should keep you clear of the gun-target line from the artillery at Ajax Main.”

  “Ajax One-Six, roger,” The southern gentleman in the plane answered. “You have sixteen P-80s with two thousand-pound bombs each. We can’t see shit through the canopy, can you mark your forward position and the enemy’s approximate center of mass.”

  Rapicault smiled and Jack grinned, too. Sixteen jets; maybe MAC-V cared if they lived or died after all.

  “Roger, Tiger,” Rapicault said, motioning for Jack to throw a smoke grenade. “Marking our forward position first.”

  Jack found the first smoke grenade on his gear, a green one, pulled the pin and threw it in between the command dugout and the nearest fighting position so as not to obscure 2nd Company’s field of fire.

  “One-Six, I see green smoke,” Tiger Four drawled. “Confirm green smoke, over.”

  Rapicault was on the other radio, speaking rapidly in Vietnamese for a few seconds before he took the hand mic back to talk to the jets. Even over the constant cacophony of artillery, mortars and gunfire, Jack could hear the big American jet engines now.

  “Roger, Tiger,” Rapicault said. “Green smoke, stand by for enemy center of mass.”

  Another volley of artillery landed, two orang-black detonations sent frag raining upon the enemy, but the third round, in the center of the sheaf, plumed into a white cloud.

  “Ajax One-Six, I tally white smoke,” Tiger Four said. “I say again, white smoke. Be advised target mark is well within danger close of your position.”

  “Roger, Tiger Four,” Rapicault said. “I confirm white smoke on the target, acknowledge danger-close.”

  “I have visual on friendly markings, I tally target marking,” Tiger Four said, and Jack could hear the eagerness in his voice. “I am at the IP now. Four-ship in the initial pass.”

  “Roger, Tiger Four, you are cleared hot,” Rapicault said.

  “Get small, Ajax,” Tiger Four said. “This is going to be close.”

  There—Jack saw four silvery winged shapes diving out of the sky like avenging angels, their engines drowning out the rifles and machine guns below. They were low enough that Jack could make out the shark’s teeth on the nose jet intake and bright red tail paint.

  As they slowed and leveled, a finned cylinder dropped from each of the plane’s bellies, falling gracefully until they hit the jungle floor and detonated. Each bomb contained the explosive force of ten artillery rounds. Jack was rocked back in the dugout by a wave of heat and concussion, his ears popping with the sudden, violent pressure change.

  Pulling himself back up, Jack returned to the dugout’s firing position and scanned the battlefield. He saw dozens more broken bodies and four great craters in the soft, muddy ground. Seeing a cluster of the enemy staggering as if punch-drunk, Jack had the presence of mind to bring his Garand up and engage them. His shots seemed to wake the rest of 2nd Company from some sort of trance, and those FVA soldiers still standing raked the dazed Legionnaires with rifle and machine gun fire.

  “Good drop,” Rapicault said, shaking his own head to clear it. “Keep laying it on.”

  “Alright, Benny, you head to thirty-thousand feet and keep an eye out,” A new voice, this one a Texan drawl, said over the radio. “Robin, head for the IP.”

  Another flight of jet-propelled birds of prey swept down upon the enemy, incinerating dozens more with their bombs and sending the remainder to their bellies to avoid obliterating death. Finally, it seemed, they had stalled the enemy’s advance.

  “We have to be ready to move,” Rapicault said. “We have one chance to break out. According to the 112th staff, the enemy’s main axis of advance is east of the lake. So we will end run round the lake to the west, keeping the water obstacle between us and them, and force march south to link up with the rest of the regiment.”

  Jack thought about the plan. There were a lot of things that could go wrong. They would have to carry their wounded on litters for at least ten kilometers. Even with the enemy suppressed by bombs and artillery, their chances of outrunning them were small. Still, their minefields were breached, their wire obstacles were largely shredded, this outpost was no longer a tenable position.

  “Alright, sir,” Jack said. “We’ll be ready.”

  The last four jets finished their run. After the thunder of their bombs and the roar of their engines had receded, the staccato cacophony of rifles and machine guns resumed, but at a much slower tempo.

  “Much obliged Tigers,” Rapicault said. “We’re still taking fire, but we’ve got some breathing room.”

  “Can you make it back to friendly lines, One-Six?” the Texan pilot asked.

  “We’re certainly going to try, Tiger,” Rapicault said. “We’ve got a lot of wounded, though.”

  “Stand by,” a feminine voice interjected. “This i
s Angel Three-Five. We are a flight of three Ravens. Meet me at the clearing on the riverbank one hundred meters south by southeast of your green smoke. My rotor cone will fit there. I can take your wounded first, then drop my litters and ferry the rest of your men on the skids.”

  “Helicopters?” Jack asked.

  “That’s right,” Rapicault said. “We’re about to get a lift from the famous flying lady-doctor of Vietnam.”

  Jack had heard of her, of course, everyone in MAC-V had heard of the beautiful French doctor who flew helicopters, plucking men from the battlefield like an angel of mercy. He’d never thought he’d meet her, though, much less get his ass pulled out of the fire by her.

  “Roger, Angel Three-Five,” Rapicault said into the hand mic, his smile much broader, and far less ironic than usual. “Thanks a lot, both of you. I take back every unkind word I’ve ever said about flyboys.”

  * * *

  Vanderburgh recognized the voice coming out of the radio even though he couldn’t understand the language. He’d never seen a need to learn English. He’d enlisted at sixteen expecting to fight the Germans, the Algerians, or perhaps the Thais and Vietnamese, but not Americans.

  And certainly not other Frenchmen. God damn you, Rapicault.

  Vanderburgh and Captain Foom were standing in the operations center of the 3rd Regiment Etranger Infantrie. The regimental commander, a big burly colonel named Faucher, and his operations officer stood on the other side of a folding table, a young lieutenant sat between them at the captured American radio, listening intently. When the radio went silent for a moment, the lieutenant looked up.

  “Sir, they’re going to try to use helicopters to evacuate across the lake,” the lieutenant said.

  Faucher looked at the map.

  “Merde,” he said in a gravelly voice. “We don’t have anything that can reach in time. Major, can we finish this business before they escape?”